".. And a dollar short"

U.S. currency, crumpled. (SOOC, cropped.)

"A day late, and a dollar short."

SHORT: DDW September 20 challenge

My country is definitely a dollar short, and then some. Every city, county, and state is desperately scratching like chickens in the dust for a few extra bucks to pave the roads, treat the sick, feed the hungry, and teach the kids. In his eight years Bill Clinton turned a pile of debt into a pile of cash, which George W. Bush immediately squandered on unwinnable wars, tax breaks for the wealthy, and "security" - whose true nature is being revealed to us by whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Meanwhile we have The Billionaires, people who lucked out in the age of the dot-com and amassed great fortunes. These are the very dollars we are short! These are the dollars that would repair our failing infrastructure and give our children decent educations. How much money can one person conceivably need to live even what most of us would consider a lavish lifestyle? Instead of being used "by the people for the people" these dollars are both frivolously spent and greedily hoarded by those who have so much that they can afford to do both at the same time. Then we admire and thank them as philanthropists!

We have been many dollars short for the past twelve years. Come October 1st, if our Congress doesn't end its endless partisan bickering, we will also be a day late. Unless the debt ceiling is raised, the government will shut down. The short- and long-term effects will be dire. If this continues they will one day say of America what Shelley said of Ozymandias:

Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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PHOTOGRAPHY NOTE

Some humor being required at this point, I offer you this quote from a New Yorker article (July 29, 2013) by Patricia Marx.

"As recently as a few decades ago, most biologists thought that the brain was fully formed during childhood and, like a photograph after it's been developed, was doomed to degrade thereafter, with neurons (nerve cells) fading like pigment on paper until you succumbed to senility. Today, we regard ... dementias as diseases, rather than as a consequence of normal aging. Moreover, we now consider the brain to be as labile as a digital image in the hands of a Photoshop fiend."

(I believe it's dyes that fade, not pigments.)